


Normalized Relations

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Diplomacy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6421882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thanks,” he said, although really he felt someone should have been thanking him. Then he pulled the papers to his chest and set off further into the Sith Embassy. </p>
<p>[Carth gets roped into talking to Darth Revan for the Republic, under the table. It's awkward. Set well post a heavily diverged KOTOR.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normalized Relations

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere around the mid point of the second book of an epic AU I am a third of the way through the first book of. I am publishing it now anyway.
> 
> The most important details of what happens before this are that Revan broke through the mindwipe before KOTOR began and overthrew Malak mid-KOTOR, the two of them are sorting out their personal issues, the Republic is warily allied with her Sith faction in a war against the True Sith Empire, and Carth co-existed with Revan and the crew on the Ebon Hawk for months while aware she remembered.
> 
> This is set in the same universe as [Educational Conversations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2726546) and [and I was focused on survival,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5709934) although both of those works take place mostly before the canon divergences that lead here.

Carth shuffled the paperwork in his hand uncomfortably and entertained a brief fantasy of putting his hand on his gun. He eyed the woman behind the front desk, who eyed him back looking about as pleased, but leaned over to talk quietly into a comm link.

“You can go back,” she said eventually in a tone of mild disbelief. “Second floor. Knock.”

“Thanks,” he said, although really he felt someone should have been thanking him. Then he pulled the papers to his chest and set off further into the Sith Embassy.

Dodonna had set him out of some insane conviction that _she_ might actually talk to him, off the record even. He was glad he'd got past the door.

He took the stairs up, knowing he'd feel itchy and trapped in an elevator. There was a security door that unlocked when he stepped onto the landing, and behind it, two doors. The light was on under one, but not the other. He picked the lit up one and knocked.

There was a slight pause, then the door opened – not automatic, but like someone had used the Force. Carth poked his head in and blinked.

He was standing in what looked like the main room of living quarters. The room was big for military, small for an apartment. There weren't a _lot_ of furnishings, nowhere near enough for him to mistake the place for anyone's home, but surprisingly, someone had tried. 

They had mostly tried by making a mess. There were clothes strewn across most of a couch, what looked like swoop racing diagrams tacked up crookedly on the walls, and datapads  _everywhere_ . It looked like someone had disassembled a couple of lightsabers on the table by the cooking area and left them there. And that wasn't counting the floor.

Once he looked at the floor, he had to look at her.

She had a portable computer open in front of her – the kind of thing engineers used, with more memory space and capabilities than a datapad – and a number of actual datapads and durasheets scattered on the floor around her. She was still wearing her boots, but other than that it looked like the stuff Jedi wore under their robes, trousers and a tank top. Basically underwear for monastics.

(The fact that Carth was in a position to say what Jedi – and, now, Sith – underwear looked like had to be in the top fifteen mistakes he'd made in his life, he decided.)

She looked up, finally, and smiled at him. It was a terrifyingly normal expression. For one disconcerting moment, he had the impression they were back on the Ebon Hawk and he'd stopped by to talk. The engine room didn't exactly have chairs, so she had usually been sprawled out on the mattress they'd dragged in, and invariably surrounded by a combination of datapads and droid parts.

Reality snapped back when she spoke. “Onasi?” One eyebrow was raised above eerily glittering gold eyes. “Didn't see that coming.”

“The Republic embassy was hoping you'd let me in at this time of night.” He edged further into the doorway and waved the sheets awkwardly. “There's some issue on Manaan they really want you to know about. _Right now_. Mind if I come in?”

She pushed herself up. “Sure. How urgent is it?”

Her tone was horribly casual. It meant he had to keep talking. He had secretly been hoping she would throw him out as soon as she found out they were trying to use him to access her. He had been fantasizing about not making it past the front door. If he failed, he could go back and say he'd tried, duty done, absolutely no small talk made with Sith Lords, and it wouldn't be because he'd let his emotions get in the way of his duty.

“They said they'd “prefer” not to wait until morning and not sarcastically, so I don't think it's worth rushing around for.”

He couldn't stop his hand from going to his blaster when she waved a hand at him. The door shut smoothly behind him.

“Could you not _do_ that when I'm in between it and you?”

“Sorry. Habit.” She walked towards the small kitchenette. “Put 'em on the card table and I'll make caf.”

“Okay.” He started picking his way across the mess on the floor. It was kind of funny – even on the Hawk he'd never seen her leave a mess like that lying around when she was done with it. He glanced down at the screen of the computer, but all he saw was what looked like incomprehensible gibberish of numbers and letters. Code, whether computer or cryptography.

Once he was at the table, his task became more complicated. The largest clear spot only measured about six inches square. He couldn't see any kind of order that he would be disturbing, though, and she had told him to put the papers there, so he moved several pieces until there was room.

It occurred to him then that he had been sent because it could theoretically be a social call, and if he was in a position to make social calls to the Dark Lord of the Sith – well, maybe this was in the top _ten_ mistakes, then. Also, he could just ask about the code.

“What were you doing when I came in?” he asked, sitting down. “I hope you weren't busy?”

“Sort of, but not work.” Revan poured the caf and carried two mugs over. She sat and slid one to him.“Updating Malak's speech synth programming again – the volume controls get weird with sarcasm. It's annoying him.”

He had been drinking when she said that; at Malak's name he coughed.

“God, you drink shitty caf.” He said this because it was true, but also, because making small talk with a Sith Lord was bad enough, but making small talk with a Sith Lord about _Malak_ might be the final push that sent him screaming out of the building.

“I started drinking it in the army.” Her lips twitched. “Got used to the taste. The expensive shit's weird as hell.”

“The surface of your tongue must have run away and died in terror,” he said, but took another drink. “I didn't know you did programming.” 

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Most of the models on the market are really fucking terrible. Well, they're _functional_ , if all you want to do is convey words that are mostly pronounced right, like reading a mission briefing. But they're not really like speech – no tone changes, no real volume control, and they pronounce words like they're written, not like they're actually said. I know enough about linguistics and programming to do the work, and I was _there_ , so...”

The thought occurred to him that Malak was probably lucky to have her. He tried to summon the will to make polite small talk about Malak's fortunes, since they were still on the subject somehow, and failed.

Instead, he discarded several more passive aggressive comments before settling on, “I'm surprised you had the time. That was during the Jedi Civil War, right?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I didn't have a lot of time. I probably couldn't have built anything from scratch, but there's a public domain basic speech synth program I was working off of. The first things I fixed were the audio controls. I worked on it when I had free time, which is why it's still being fixed this many years later.”

“So when you couldn't sleep?”

“You know me disturbingly well. I should probably be ordering you killed right this minute.” She raised the mug to him sardonically. When he spluttered, she added, “Joke.”

“Yeah, _sure,_ ” he said, and decided the programming was the safer conversation topic after all. “You said there's not much on the market – is the one you're making going to be?”

“Some of it is, yeah – it would be stupid to go to all that effort to make a working speech synth for someone who can't talk and then only use it for one person. I don't know when it was most recently put out publicly, though, someone else is in charge of that shit. Gotta check at some point.”

Finally, mercifully, she picked up the paperwork and started skimming it. “What's this about?”

“Hey, I'm just the delivery boy.” Carth watched her. “It should all be there, though.”

“Looks like – well. Looks like I'm going to _strangle_ that idiot Horsta.”

His curiosity, once again, got the better of him. “Who?” he asked, chanting _just the errand boy_ mentally.

“The commander on Manaan. Mine, I mean.” Revan shoved her hair out of her face and pursed her lips at the sheet.

Carth felt a vague sense of discomfort. Her eyes were glowing again. “Please tell me I didn't just get someone killed.”

Even if they were a Sith. He supposed they were technically at peace now, and so he ought to feel the same about getting a Sith killed as anyone else. In theory. And he would, just as soon as he signed up for voluntary transfer to Hoth.

“Huh?” She glanced up at him, then smiled again.

_Joke,_ he thought. It was the same slight curve to her lips.

On second thought, voluntary transfer to Hoth would get him _away from Revan._

“Oh, no. He hasn't done anything to actually merit execution. Also, me strangling people is not a standard punishment in the Sith law system,” Revan said dryly.

“Glad to hear it,” he said, voice like Tatooine. “Although it's a surprise.”

“Yeah, that's a traditionalist thing. I mean, True Sith. The random executions of underlings,” she said absently, going back to the paperwork. “I could go over all the reasons it's stupid and evil but I'm pretty sure you don't need convincing.”

“Definitely not,” he said, watching her again.

“You sure?” She was actually grinning when she looked up at him. “I have a speech, it's five minutes long. You'd like it, there's lots of mocking the True Sith and their council. I'd be happy to deliver it.”

Something was different about her, had seemed off since he walked in the door. Now the grin made it clear. She looked relaxed.

On the Hawk, she had always seemed stretched almost to the point of snapping – constantly working, rushing around for something else to do. If there wasn't combat or a mission there was ship repair, or tinkering with the droids, or random people's problems. When she was forced to stop, she'd fidget uncomfortably or pace, or pick fights with him. Even in her sleep, she'd been restless, often waking up screaming and launching straight back into work as a distraction.

Now, that tension seemed to have vanished. There were undoubtedly fifty more urgent things for the Dark Lord of the Sith to do. He had _told_ Dodonna that when she suggested he come, in fact. She hadn't even immediately obsessed over the papers. And she was smiling, her back was to him – not that that meant all that much with Force users – and _making stupid jokes._ Infuriating ones, yes, but still.

Carth glanced at her again and realized that she wasn't wearing her lightsabers. She'd let him in and gone to the kitchen unarmed. They might even be the ones disassembled on the table.

Fuck, he thought, watching her go over the paperwork. Well, the mess of the last decade had worked out for someone, apparently. Of course it was someone who didn't deserve it in any sense of the word.

“Why are you being so polite to me?” he asked before he could change his mind.

“If Dodonna's going to send me your pretty face every time she wants my attention, I'd better not piss you off,” Revan said, laughing. “You're easier to deal with when you aren't fantasizing about shooting me.”

_Fuck_ . She was right. Now that he had succeeded, this wasn't going to be a one time deal.

“You know, Revan,” he said, turning the caf mug absently and watching the liquid make an unpleasant slorping sound. “There's still time to order me killed.”

 


End file.
